What's Happening

At The Farm

Subscribe to this blog

It hasn't always felt like it, but truly spring is here. It's a cold one so far, but the signs of the season are definitely here (even if we are shivering a little too hard to enjoy noticing them at times).

Our apprentice crew arrived on April 1 and has jumped right in! We have three new, eager crew members this year (Alexandra, Jake, and Ben) who have joined our seasoned veteran (Ellen) and are hard at work all around the farm. Ellen has been getting all of our fields plowed, Jake has been making our planting beds, Ben has been spreading the fertilizer, and Alexandra has been sowing thousands of seeds in the greenhouse for spring planting later in the spring. In addition, there's plenty of work for all of us tending our perennial crops (blueberries, strawberries, etc), starting construction projects, and doing all of the other work that goes into getting this circus up and running again.

Zoe, Karen, and I, have been mostly occupied with making plans and then keeping our new crew busy with many tasks that are mostly new for all of them. There's a lot of learning around the farm in the early season, as people need to operate tractors, use tools, and figure out how to operate the many systems that we use to take our food on the journey from seed to harvest to your kitchen! Behind the scenes, Abbe continues to do all of our administrative work each week and Ken has returned to the workshop where he began getting the winter out of our trucks and tractors so they could get back to the fields.

We have the usual plans for this upcoming season: to grow 30 acres of vegetables and feed 700 families using sustainable techniques which leave our soil as good (or better) than we found it. And to use this work to train our apprentices in how to manage these techniques and develop their own. In addition, we have a few special projects in mind that we are hoping to get done - upgrading & maintaining our fieldhouses, purchasing a new root digger and root washer, and re-configuring many of our pasture fences to maximize our cows grazing here and at the Snyder Farm down the road. So, we have plenty to do, and are thankful for the people to help get this work done.

The question on everyone's mind right now, is whether the unusually cold spring will have any effect on our growing season. While we are sure it will, we never can be sure just how. Certainly things are behind where they were last year at this time, but anything can happen (and it usually does). In other words, welcome to being a CSA shareholder - Where your food is actually the result of a living, breathing farm, being worked by living, breathing people. We are excited for the opportunity to connect you to this life-affirming process and hope that you will enjoy being a part of it as much as we do.

We will be in touch with you periodically via email to keep you up-to-date with what's happening here at the farm (and any related events that might be of interest). We have also updated our calendar on our website so you can check out our plans for the coming season. And, if you are so inclined, you can also stay in touch by "liking" us on Facebook, and following us Instagram and Twitter where we post pictures of current activities around the farm. If you are a new shareholder, you will receive a Shareholder Handbook at the beginning of May to let you know what to expect for the coming season. We also encourage you to come and help out anytime on the farm - just send us an email and we'll tell you how to plug in. If you have any questions or concerns, in the meantime, feel free to reach out to us via email or phone.

We are looking forward to a great season to come and are glad you are joining us!!

Who really knows what to think anymore. Since last week, we have seen 4" of snow, 72F and sunny, and a cold 23F morning with frosty twigs. What's a farmer to do? Go the office and plan for the coming season!

We spent most of February wrapping up last year and getting ready to spring into the next. I spent most of my time writing the year-end newsletter; look for yours in the mail in a week or so (or go to our website - http://www.brookfieldfarm.org/annual-newsletters/ - and check out the color version!). Zoe took a well-earned vacation, and upon returning, set about laying out this years' field plans and hatching plans for keeping share sales strong. Karen started making plans for all of the great items available from our local partners in our Farm Shop as well as lunch program for the farm crew. And Abbe finished the 2017 financials and continued to process the new shares, the payments, and all of the other paper and bits that need to be dealt with to keep this cacaphony going year after year.

All the while the weather did what the weather does - anything it wants. When it got warmer, we went outside and got the cows fence re-set and the fieldhouse disaster cleaned up. When it got colder, we plowed and shoveled the snow and went to the office to click. And slowly, but surely, started to realize, that oh so soon we will be putting little tiny seeds in little tiny pots and starting the train once again. Its so close, we can almost taste it.

Have you started to notice the days getting longer? When we ended the work day yesterday at 5 pm, Karen looked outside and said "Well since it is undeniably light out, I can go take the laundry in!" Welcome February. Time to get busy, time to fit all the things back in along all the edges, time to stretch into the lengthening days. Time to get excited. Is it true that we have only six or seven weeks until we start the greenhouse? Chopping up an onion, I start itching to feel again the odd shape of a tiny onion seed dropping out from between my fingers, over and over and over again.

What's happening over and over this month is freezing and thawing. The pipes froze and unfroze and so did the parking lot. Early in the month, blustering wind ripped the "skin" off of our new hay house. Goodbye, protection for the cow's feed! Time to fit a tarp over it, clamber over the bales and weigh it down tightly on each side, and do it over again when it inevitably blows off. Back to the old way, try again next year at a "better" solution.

After the hay house skin ripped, the deep freeze froze the cow's "frost free" water line. (Say that ten times fast). We tried all our tricks - (hint: boiling water and blankets), and when our tricks didn't work, we realized just how far from the source the frozen blockage must be. We decided to haul them water the old-fashioned way. Warm up a hose, fill up a tank, hope the cows drink their fill before it freezes again! What this means for us: lots of de-frosting all the pieces of the watering system in all the ways we know how (point a multi-fuel heater at it, put it in the bathroom overnight, hang it a certain way where the water drains and doesn't freeze in the hose ...) As always, we're watchers of the weather. The cows, for their part, remain their deeply grounded cow-energy selves. Slow. Moo-y when they want more hay. Happy to stand close to each other when it's cold. Curious to lick us with their rough tongues while we fill their water tank.

That's January. When we can't get all the way down to the root of the problem, we find another way around, like a carrot does when it hits a hard spot in it's targeted path through the soil. We take that same old sweet potato soup and add some exciting toppings for intrigue and flair. And in February, we'll gather our energy to spring up farmin' full steam.We hope you enjoy the winter bounty,

Ski tracks out the back trails. Boot tracks through the backyard. It's the season of tracking and we're hard at work: counting vegetables grown and vegetables distributed, members and renewal rates, equipment and supplies. How did this year go? It feels like it was a bountiful fall for leeks, for carrots. We know that in our memories of the work days and in our guts as we look in the root cellar. But when we start counting, our memories get confirmed and also more refined by data. How did it compare to last year? To the last ten? We enter the totals, review the surveys and clack on our keyboards, snuggled up inside in our sweaters.

Outside, snow has settled on the fields. Ice coats the accessible garden, forms overnight on our windshields, and develops in moments on our eyelashes outside. Just before the single digits arrived we sent the cabbage and onions down to the cellar. Our low-tech (but usually effective) system of draping and un-draping blankets and tarps wouldn't keep them from freezing in the harvest shed anymore. Just in time. Some things didn't go so smoothly: a pipe broke in the bathroom. Water on the floor was ice a few minutes later! But Dan was on it, shutting off the rushing water and planning the fix. Less of a crisis, more of a "doh!" moment: a small cow kept heading out on a hunt for grass, a mysterious escape, as the pasture fence was "hot" and intact (... only after the third time I found the door they'd pushed open in back of the barn). Certainly enough going on to keep things exciting.

And down in the cellar there's a feeling of fullness - crops all piled in to make space for those "upstairs" vegetables. The new string lights add to the festive-factor. Come on down, breathe in the sharp, cold air! Take your vegetables home in brimming bags. Put some soup on the stove, stretch your cold muscles in a cozy spot. Breathe out - all warm and safe.

After a very memorable growing season, we brought the bulk leeks in on Friday - the last crop in the field. We sorted the cabbage in the harvest shed, packed the squash and sweet potatoes into the walk-in warmer (used-to-be-cooler), organized the root cellar and called this outdoor season over. With over 40,000 lbs of beautiful produce in the safety of our winter storage, we are ready to head for a rest and share the remaining bounty of this season with all of you until March.

Sunny, Rebecca and Ellen finished their apprenticeship on Saturday at noon - they are ready for hibernation mode. One of the last things they did was put straw mulch on all of the strawberries to protect them through the winter. Doing that job reminded them of the first days they worked this season, of getting to know each other while raking straw off the strawberries, uncovering them for springtime. It seems like so long ago and also not long ago at all. Ellen's headed to Colorado for the winter but coming back for a second year apprenticeship (hurray!). Sunny and Rebecca, who have each apprenticed for two years now, have finished their time on the farm and are moving on to other opportunities, but plan to live in the apprentice house over the winter and help with some winter work - you might see them stocking up the share! So it wasn't that Saturday was a final goodbye for any one of us, but it did mark the end of the official apprenticeship season, of the commitment we made to learn and teach and work together. I'm so grateful for all three of them; for their growing confidence as farmers, their enthusiasm, their care, their support of the farm through their attitude and all of their hard work. 2018 apprentices - they did it!! Congratulations!

Meanwhile, life at the farm continues, more indoors than out. Abbe continues to work in the office, making sure that checks are deposited and bills are paid. Dan, Karen I are laying the ground work for next season as we clean up the remains of this one. We still need to store all of our machinery under cover, mow the raspberries and put the snow plow on the plow truck. But we will get these jobs done in due course, without nearly the hustle and bustle of June.

And then we will start to take a tally of all that happened around the farm these past months. Counting season is about to come, the time of taking-stock and transposing data, making way for reflection and potential for improvement. At the same time, it all begins again with a brand new seed order. As you head downstairs to the root cellar to eat the bounty of this past fall, know that even now a new beginning is already happening. Not just in the office but out in the garlic field where the cloves for next year are waiting under the straw, under the ground. It's time to move slowly into that new beginning, and just like the garlic, the first step is to rest and get our bearings. Eat. Make squash soup, roast root vegetables and bake sweet potato pies. Luckily, we have plenty in the root cellar.

The first cold nights were such a relief. Turn the fan on, get some cold air into the cellar. Wake up to light frosts, knowing the carrots and the kale would be all the sweeter for them. Harvest something active first thing, get bodies moving. This was a week to get crops out of the ground. We started with all the “minor roots,” the radishes and turnips and rutabagas, 5500 lbs. Then we moved on to celeriac on Thursday. And all the while, we were checking Friday night’s weather. 17 degrees, it said. Then 11 degrees. Then 7. Okay. Which crops still in the ground would want to come out? All of them? Breathe. Try asking a different way: which are the most hardy? We knew that Parsnips, hardy roots that can even be left overwinter til spring, would be fine. Carrots likely too, as long as the ground doesn’t freeze. And Brussel Sprouts can tolerate pretty low temps, we think they’ll make it. Okay, so which would be most obviously damaged? Celery, celeriac, cabbage. We counted up the pounds and started calling for some extra help.

One reality that blew in swift and cold with the weather this week, is that indeed this growing season is nearing an end. After countless hours of preparation and planning. After hiring our crew, and then welcoming them, orienting them, training them, and working with them. After plowing, bed making, seeding, planting, cultivating, and harvesting. After it rained and rained, dried out, and rained again. And after bringing in the fruits of our labors during these past three months of fall harvest. It is now truly coming to an end.

And where does this all leave us? What is the story that we will tell ourselves about this season? What are the lasting images and memories that we will keep once the last bucket is emptied and stacked on the harvest shed wall? We probably won't know for sure for a while, but here's a first draft...

One main theme of this season will be the varied pace. We hit the spring spinach right and harvested hundreds and hundreds of pounds, it just kept growing because June never got too hot. But then, the music slowed. We waded through standing water in the fields to plant the sweet potatoes. Harvests of many “hot” crops were delayed because of the cold and wet spring and summer. We waited for our summer squash, corn, tomatoes, eggplants, and melons. And then the tempo changed again. The fall broccoli was planted in a cool July, and grew happily in perfect brassica chill, experiencing none of the usual summer stress-out these fall crops face. And then the hot and dry early fall pushed these happy plants to full expression. The broccoli and cauliflower came on early and in huge quantities. Harvests took over seemingly all of our work time as the frost held off. We had cauliflower and tomatoes in the share at the same time. Peppers on and on and on. This lingering warmth extended our chance to get the warm-weather storage crops out of the field: the squash and sweet potato harvests were not rushed by cold. And we had to wait to harvest crops into the cellar, keeping the beat with cover crops and garlic planting. Now, suddenly winter is here and it’s a race to the finish line.

What makes us able to “weather” these changes in pace? We know that no matter how many hopes and dreams we may have for our little farm, none would come true without the help of our three apprentices (Rebecca, Sunny and Ellen), who came to work each day from 6am - 5pm from April 'til Thanksgiving. These women formed the backbone of the labor necessary to turn this farm from thoughts to 250,000 lbs of delicious, nutritious vegetables. They are highly motivated and deeply invested in what we’re doing. If the roller coaster is taking me for a ride, all I have to remember to do is explain to them what the pressures are and they are right there with us: do we need to get all these lettuces planted in the pouring rain? “No problem! We can do that!” And do it again tomorrow.

And for our long-term staff: Abbe, who keeps the books and administration and keeps our lives organized, with patience and skill. And Ken who fixes things when they are broken. For the support and pinch-hitting this season (and in life) from my partner, former apprentice Will Van Heuvelen. In learning to how to play my part in managing this great cacophony, I feel lucky to be on a team with Karen and Dan, who always make their jobs look far easier than they are. We couldn’t ask for better mentors, farmers and managers. The constancy of their availability, advice and oversight makes it possible for all of us to mostly stay ahead of the crazy curves - hopefully putting our resources and attention in the just the right places for them to do the most good. And when we fall behind, it’s Dan and Karen who adeptly notice and correct our course.

Standing behind all of this day-to-day labor, learning and leadership is you (and the you’s that have come before you). The farm is 31 years old, three + decades of food and partnership. We feel the long-standing commitment to our work here in small daily ways and in big ones. This vision of mutual support, continuity and deep nourishment wouldn’t be possible without you. You share the vision and you co-create it with us, investing your time and money in this farm and this community. This is what security looks like.

Friday when we put out the phone calls, they were answered. Friends, fellow farmers, students and a whole ultimate team came to help get the food in with freezing hands and lots of cheering. 3000 lbs of celeriac. 8000 lbs of cabbage. 500 celery and even 1000 lbs of carrots. We pushed it all down to the cellar as the temperature plummeted. Once more, because of all the support we have, we were resilient enough to do the job.

Who would want more than a job to do? And who would want more than to have the tools and support to to the job that they want to do? And for that, we give the deepest thanks of all. For letting us do this work one more year. To do something for all of us. To grow our food. And take care of our land. Just so that we will perhaps be able to do it all again next year. We will go to bed now. Take a big nap. And when we awake, we hope to find you here again. Ready to help us write this story, one more time.

Wednesday of this week was frigid - the frost stuck around through mid-morning. No sooner had we wrapped our heads around the idea that the cold world had finally come, than we were back out there Friday wondering why we'd worn long johns (and how could we get them off quickly). Luckily, we are getting used to figuring things out on the fly.

Because the root cellar still isn't cold enough to store food, we're holding off on bulk harvesting. So! We pulled drip tape and black plastic mulch from the hot crops; a very Halloween-y thing to do. Then Sunny turned the harrow to the cleared out vegetable fields and prepared the soil so Ellen could bring the grain drill and sow the winter rye on 8 acres of ground ready for a good long rest. Going from flapping plastic and ghosts of dead pepper plants to neatly and freshly planted cover crop is the most satisfying thing I can think of. Better than nice clean sheets and a warm crisply made bed. Rejuvenation! Rejoice!

Meanwhile, Dan and Rebecca prepared the lower field with the bedformer. Where there once were pumpkins, now there were beds for our last crop of the season - next years garlic! Karen began planting Thursday and Friday's big crew finished the job.With the temps hovering in the mid 60s, we pretended it was spring again. We got down to our short-sleeves, and dropped and plopped 10,000 garlic cloves into the still-warm earth. This is the garlic we'll enjoy next season, starting with the scapes when the share starts in June. This is the garlic we'll harvest together next July. This not just an end, it is the beginning. Planting is time to dream forward. (And it is time to renew your share!)

What's left? 30,000 lbs of vegetables to harvest and we'll be done. We will be squirreling them away into your homes and into our cellar for the next few weeks. And then? Nice clean sheets and sleep at last, until we (and the garlic) wake up next spring.We hope you enjoy the harvest.

Two sunny days on the schedule: Monday (for sweet potatoes) and Friday (for regular spuds). These last sweet potato beds had some peculiar characteristics that we're finding more common with sweet potatoes like these, grown on plastic mulch: some of the potatoes are huge. All the water comes in one hole in the plastic, so instead of spreading out along the root, they tend to just get bigger in one spot. Bigger than a newborn baby. Bigger than a cat. Once year, a winter shareholder photoshopped one to look like a giant asteroid hitting earth. They make an impression. And by the end of Monday, they were all bagged up in the greenhouse!

Then Tuesday through Thursday were rainy, perfect time to pop the garlic for planting. Separating the cloves is the last step before we push them deep in the cold soil, where they want to grow a few roots and then sleep all winter before sprouting up in spring.

Friday the sun came out again, muddy but bright and dry enough to dig and pick up the potatoes. And so, we did! That's what we call a rain sandwich. And for dessert, I see some cold nights coming up. We're craving those like sugar - not just for the fire in the wood stove but also because once the cellar gets cold we can begin to bring in the bulk cabbage and roots. Time to root root root for some chilly weather! We hope you enjoy the harvest.

Monday night the frost came again to the farm fields. In the afternoon, we decided against covering the remains of the beans. Time to let go.

Last week when it frosted we looked around afterwards to find some things only singed - a few straggling cosmos flowers, only the tips of the galinsoga weeds dying back. This time, Tuesday morning came with the full flavor of frosty hush and there was no doubt about the crystals on our windshields. Now, the galinsoga is dead down to the very thickest stems. The bean leaves hang limp. All was quiet.

But just for a moment. These first frosts turn a page in our season, and then, inhaling, we're on to a new chapter. We've said goodbye to some of our main characters - all the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, for example. But we're just getting to know others. We scrape off the windshields and begin our harvest with the roots in order to give the greens some time to thaw. These are the days of rambling conversations, about Ken Burns and sideburns and heartburn and burning questions. These are the days of running to pick up buckets into the truck, of loading andunloading 50 lb sacks of good food. On Friday when we brought in the first brussels sprouts we we got the first long look at how the sprouts look with side leaves stripped away - wow, they look good!

You might wonder: why are some plants killed so quickly by a frost but not others? Plants die when their cell walls burst, and the cold tolerant plants have protection: sugar! Carrots, other roots and brassicas are all sweeter after the frost. The other thing that happens is a transition in energy. Plants get signals that a period of dormancy approaches. They send energy down, out of their leaves and into their roots for storage. And so do we, resilient humans. We take a little longer to thaw in the morning, making time to be sweet to ourselves like hardy vegetables. Some of our tasks and worries are stripped away - time to let go - and now what's important is very clear. We dry out the root cellar and start sending down our storage harvests of potatoes, cabbage and roots. We hope you enjoy the harvest.

For the first time in a long time, Monday dawned wet and rainy. It dumped and dumped some more, taking a break for lunch, and then returning in the evening for a final soak cycle. Mission accomplished; water table replenished, sweet peppers wrinkle-free, carrot digger no longer held up by overly-dry soil.

We enjoyed the day off from the constancy of the fall harvest, and used the time to clean up the red onions and transform the fieldhouses from their summer of basil into their winter of cover crops, soil building, and perhaps a few laying hens if we can find them. When the weather cleared on Tuesday, it was back to the fields for more beautiful sweet potatoes (as well as everything else all at once). With the temperatures moderating, and the leaves starting to sparkle, it looked and felt a lot like fall here for a change; And what can be better than New England Autumn?

Everywhere I go these days, people ask me, "Is the farm slowing down?" they say, expecting me to oblige with a sigh of relief. Ever the incorrigible farmer, I can't quite confirm that report, so I shuffle a bit, look down at my shoes, kick the dirt a bit, and just say, "Well, not really." While there is a different rhythm to the day without so many jobs to do, the actual amount of labor required now on the farm is basically unchanged. It's just all of the same type of labor; Harvesting! My mind quickly goes to the weekly apprentice farm tour, where we counted up all of the crops left in the field. Carrots - 13,000 lbs. Potatoes - 8000 lbs. Cabbage - 11,000 lbs. Before too long we are getting close to 100,000 lbs and, well, it's really just time to stop counting and, well, just start picking. So, no, not slowing down. Just changing up. And a welcome change. Colder nights. Crisper air. And a steady map as to where to turn our attention nearly every minute. When that barn door closes on the day before Thanksgiving, we'll say we are slowing down. For now, it's just straight on til morning.

Last week, we watched the forecast of frost for the weekend carefully as it rose and fell a degree or two. On Friday, we set out the row cover we'd need to protect the peppers and the beans and we made sure the harvested squash and sweet potatoes were tucked into the greenhouse. Then the cold night moved from Saturday to Sunday night, so we waited. Sunday evening, Dan and Ellen were at the ready and covered up the plants so they'd make it through. "Goodbye tomatoes, it's been a good long run with you this year," we thought.

On Monday morning, we proceeded through the harvest as though it had frosted, though it wasn't visibly white out - we dug some roots first andmoved the greens harvest later in the morning so they'd have time to thaw. But by mid-morning we could tell it hadn't quite frosted after all. All those tomatoes we'd mentally prepared to lose overnight? There they were - still ripe on the vine. So we got the buckets and went picking again.

It had a flavor of saying a heartfelt farewell to someone outside a building, only to find you're walking the same direction. But less "walkward," because they are tomatoes. Often, the tomatoes die in a frost with green ones still on the vines. This year, there are no more green tomatoes left; they've fully fruited. These are tomatoes that have lived a good long life. As the week warmed up, we allcelebrated what still is with another fresh salsa. Then on Friday we harvested the first fall carrots. They're still weedy because no frost has killed the tender galinsoga weeds yet. But when we stood up we saw for the first time that we're already in the midst of the fall leaf show. And we gratefully took some of these last borrowed time tomatoes home to make a soup. We hope you enjoy the harvest.

Last Saturday, it took more than 100 helping hands all of 15 minutes to harvest the carving pumpkins into bins. Hardly the blink of an eye! Many we-did-it smiles. Then off everyone went to have a cup of cider or take a wagon ride to the pigs, and Rebecca and I began working to bring the bins to the barn. But - the lift arms on the tractor stopped working. I couldn'tseehow the pumpkins could get to Sunny in the farm shop? Just then Ellen came around the bend on her tractor, towing some wagon-riding shareholders, and a plan appeared. One by one, they "chained" a bin full of pumpkins onto the wagon, and then made a human circle around the pumpkins to keep them from falling off on the way. And off they went! Look at that people power!

Predictably, on Monday, there was a whole new list to see to. Sweet potato harvest loomed - a big project! I thought about getting all the smaller projects done first, and tackling the sweet potatoes once they were done. "Just go see," Dan advised. "Try a bed, figure out if your harvest system works." So we went right for them the next day. Half were grown on beds using plastic mulch and drip irrigation. The weeder crew remembers that day - we had to plant them by hand because the water was so deep that we couldn't even see the pathways. It was wet. wet. wet. They didn't all make it - it's hard out there for a little sweet potato plant on hot black plastic even in the best conditions. The other half, on bare ground, were on drier land, and had a better time of it. So we started our harvest with those. First, by mowing and "beating" the vines. Next, the digger bar goes under, the spuds come up. Then we scrum through the loose earth, put spuds in buckets, then back to the shed to empty them into bags. This week the weather matched the crop - it was tropically hot out there! We did 1.5 beds, enough to see we likely have a reasonable harvest out there, despite the early season conditions. Phew! Dan was right. It was a lot easier moving towards the week's cover cropping and other tasks with a clear picture of this next big process. That the yield is out there, that the digger bar goes deep enough, that the way we remove the vines is working. A reminder for me - when there's something big coming up - just start, do enough so you can see the task clearly, not just the looming bigness of it. When Monday comes, we'll be ready to dig again, all systems go, and with a little luck, there will be thousands and thousands of pounds curing in the greenhouse by next weekend. We hope you enjoy the harvest.

"How do you like to be cheered for?" I asked Will Thornton after lunch."It depends what I'm doing," he answered. "If I'm washing dishes, I want it as weird as possible. Make me laugh. If I'm running a long race, words of affirmation. If I'm playing the last point in a big game, just scream!"

Then we embarked on the last winter squash pick up for the crew, people and tractors and wagons. Big wooden bins on the wagons. A crew seven strong - one driver and three pairs of people - three to throw the squash up from the field and three to catch them and fill the bins. In the squash, the people riding the wagon, catching the squash and placing them in the bins, have the biggest picture view. The people catching can see the field, from above, and help direct the throwers to any overlooked squash. The people catching can see how full the bins are and when it's time to move on to the next wagon. Most importantly, the people catching can see the "throwers "and the squash that they are throwing. And so an important job of the people catching is to cheer for the throwers. What you want for cheering when you're throwing squash is for the person catching to keep talking so you can know where they are, where their hands are to catch the squash. (The people catching, after all, are on the wagon which is being pulled behind a tractor - moving targets). All kinds of noises work. From a simple "yeah" to a song about cheese pumpkins, the people catching keep the noises coming, a sound beacon for squash trajectory when there's a lot going on at once.

And there's a lot going on at once, in and out of the squash field. Days and nights are equal lengths. Both at once. This warm spell means the late summer is still with us, even as fall has also arrived. Both at once. Tomatoes and cauliflower and winter squash. Here's what the squash harvest has to say to us in this big "all at once" time - keep talking. We can light each other's way. We hope you enjoy the harvest.

Hello again fan-on, windows-open sleeping weather. Oops - hello again pink sunburnt cheeks! Ah, hello again tomatoes - so nice to see you ripening up! Welcome back (briefly) to cold lunches, shorts, swimming holes, and sweaty pits. Days and nights are warm. Lucky for us, with a crop of squash to bring in, that first frost(so far) kept it's distance. So we got busy!

First, the harvests have outgrown their "harvest morning" time slot - it's "harvest day" this time of year. There's beautiful spinach to pick each morning - green gold from a cold early September. There's hours of brassica bounty: "womping" cabbage, filling barrels of kale, hunting through the broccoli rows, and clipping kohlrabi. Then sweet ripe peppers and tomatoes. Luckily, we hired awesome fall harvest help; Will Thornton joins our harvests three days a week and just when full-time farmers might feel fatigue, he's there with contagious positive energy.

On Monday afternoon the apprentices and Dan took a break from bringing in food to host the CRAFT program. They sat on the porch with 30 other apprentices from regional farms and heard from Dan about how we budget, how we record-keep, how we financially plan and account for what happens on the farm. CRAFT is one of the ways this farm acts on our value of transparency and of mentorship. And Dan gives one great talk. "I can't imagine being that happy-go-lucky in September on a farm. Is he always that positive?" They ask. Lucky for us, yes he is, almost all the time!

We clipped squash when we could, a row here, a row there, between moving cows and setting up the farm shop and packing boxes for Boston. On Friday, we all headed out to the field and brought in the first four full bins. Will Thornton was so excited he couldn't even say words, just squawking with glee. Then we kept clipping, setting the table for a Monday of grinning and tossing. At the end of the day, the question feels more like how could we not be this happy-go-lucky in September? All our work laid out before us. These farmers' electric joy: throwing some squash through the air!

At the beginning of the week, we checked the winter squash; was it buttery yellow and ready to harvest? But it wasn't quite ripe. Makes sense - the field was too wet to plant on the planting date, so it was seeded a week late. On top of that, the whole season has been running a week behind schedule due to the cold weather. So we weren't surprised. When the squash still wasn't ripe mid-week, we caught a glimpse of the future. Winter squash harvest has a drop dead deadline (for the squash). The frost. Remember the year 50 shareholders harvested the squash with us on a Sunday because a sudden frost was coming? Our predicted first frost date is September 15, but these past weeks we've felt the winter chill in the morning air. There was even a spotty frost on September 1st that seemed to pass just over us; we saw tiny pockets of it but no damage. We can see the thousands and thousands of pounds of delicata and butternut and kabocha in the fields, and we can see the window of time shrinking between when it's ripe, and when the frost comes. That's gonna mean some heavy lifting! And so, the squash is the farm news of the week, though it's still on the horizon.

Here's what we did do this week. The present called us to attention with the urgent and immediate task of harvesting the mountains of food that is ripe - peppers! potatoes! all kinds of brassicas! Next, we prepared so we're ready when the squash is: we repaired bins and wagons, tools of the squash harvest trade. We started selling winter shares, the final destination of some of this squash! Looking at the impending cascade of squash and realized that once it starts, it'll leave little time for anything else til it's safely in the greenhouse. So we breathed, and we did the things we won't have time to do when we're focused on the squash. We cover cropped, seeding oats and clover to protect finished fields from erosion, and to build nitrogen, minerals and organic matter in the soil. Cover cropping our long term investment in replenishing the healthy soil. After all, it's because of the soil that we are even able to have all this squash in the fields to worry about! And just in time for next week, the first squash is ready and we are ready to pick them.We hope you enjoy the harvest.

With our apprentice crew back from their vacation rotation, and the weeder crew gone back to school we knew this week would have a new look. We didn't know this would include sweatshirts, long johns, and wishing wistfully for a warm bowl of soup for lunch. Some things you can predict. Others you can't.

The unusually cold weather did some things, that's for sure: The tomatoes pretty much stopped ripening. They don't like it below 60F at night (let alone 45F!). The cukes and zukes pretty much went away (typical, but a little quicker than usual!). And the greens sweetened up, growing big and fluffy. We will roll with these punches, as none of them are a knock-out; If the weather warms up (as predicted) those tomatoes will start to flow again...

But despite the chilly surprise, this week was mostly just getting down to business-as-usual; When the school bus rolls around the neighborhood for the first time, it's time to start the fall harvest for sure. After a spring of planting and a summer of tending, it's now officially time to reap what we have sown. And reap we did, starting with our crop of yellow storage onions. Up come the lugs from the cellar, out to the field, scrounge through the weeds to fill the lugs with those golden bulbs. Lugs to the truck, truck to the greenhouse. Lugs to the tables. Do it again. A few times. By the end of the week there were around 4000 lbs safely curing in the greenhouse.

By weeks' end we also had time to get to the spuds. This event is always exciting as it is shrouded in mystery until you dig a whole row. This crop holds it's secrets tightly. The digger was set up and the tractor was attached. Plunge goes the digger pan. And.....And....out comes the dirt, the weeds, and....the spuds. They look....pretty good. Enough gawking. Get the buckets. Get the crew. Spuds in buckets. Buckets in truck. Truck to barn. It was cold. But we knew where we were. Here we go. Fall harvest on.

What did we do this week? It is, admittedly, a bit of a blur. One childhood piece of advice I remember: to prevent dizziness when you're spinning around fast, lock your eye on the same point each time you go around. In farming, I'm learning that reference point is to get the basics done. In the spring, put seeds in the ground. In summer and fall, get the harvest in. This week: thousands of pounds of tomatoes. And thousands of pounds of melons. Lots of summer to be grateful for. And the first hints of fall - first big broccoli harvest, and lacinato kale is ready too. The harvests now take on an Alice-in-Wonderland theme; after the corn makes us tiny, the broccoli makes giants of us all as we walk over forests of tiny broccoli trees. Sunny finished her summer harvest-manager role on Thursday, a second-year apprenticeship area of focus that for her was characterized by (lots of) yellow legal pads, (lots of) cucumbers, and (lots of) positive communication. And on Friday Ellen took on the role for the week, beginning a fall opportunity for the apprentices to to rotate the harvest management weekly between them.

In the middle of all the harvesting of full-grown crops we looked down and realized the newly seeded ones needed cultivating, so we snuck that in. On a windless morning we re-skinned the greenhouse, so we have a dry space to put all the onions we'll harvest next week. It looks like new again, especially because Dan and Karen built some very spiffy roll-up sides. Fewer and fewer weeders worked each day as they finished their seasons, and we bid them good-school-years-to-all. Their parting gift: thinning the fall rutabagas and turnips so the roots can grow big and round. When Rebecca returns from her vacation this week the full-season crew will be back together for the fall; just like we were in the spring, four or five of us, not twenty anymore.

This is back-to-school moment is a traditional time of transition, and we feel it on the farm too in all of these ways: the harvests, the busy farm shops, the crew's size, the projects both finished and un-finished.When we feel dizzy? Make sure the food gets picked.There! Stability in theconstantmotion of transition. We hope you enjoy the harvest!

The cucumber waterfall started at the end of last week. Our steady harvests of 200 lbs swelled to 400 each pick, totalling 1200 lbs for the week. On Monday there was another big harvest of them ripe and ready, so out we went. And then we turned to the tomatoes and found another unstoppable fountain: we could fill buckets standing in just one spot. That many. Once all 1700 lbs were in the farm shop and the harvest was all washed and packed, we grabbed some overflowing cukes and tomatoes for ourselves, packed some bread and cheese to supplement, and all 20 of us drove up to the Deerfield River for Crew Appreciation Day.On the Deerfield, the flow varies depending when they release the dam upstream. Wecall the Waterline to check the "flowcast" before we go. Given all the rushing rivers of incoming crops at the farm, it might seem like a funny time to take a whole afternoon for a river trip. But the weeders will head to school at the end of the month, and we'll miss them! And truthfully, we've crested the plant-growing peak of the season. Now we're riding the swelling wave of the harvest. And that will continue on into the fall. Time to take a moment for appreciation of it all. It's also glorious out there (everywhere) right now - the yellows and purples of goldenrod, loosetrife, and Joe Pye weed pop against the greenery. Add the rush of the river, and we're swept away. Ahhh. We jumped in the deep spots. We splashed and paddled. We mostly just went with the flow had big smiles at the end.Monday was an extra-great day to tube because we caught the last lull before the big rush of melons. And then the dam burst and they were ready on Wednesday - 8000 lbs of sweetness. Our crew: refreshed and ready. Looking around the farm right now, this story is likely to repeat itself. It looks like a river of food from here to the horizon. We're still farming so there's still uncertainty. We know that this river might hit some rocky rapids, some shallower spots. But the current "flowcast" is high. We hope you enjoy the harvest.

Tuesday morning we headed out early for our first corn harvest. Mist and foggy windshields, counting corn stalks to place the barrels in the right place, picking ears down the rows. There's nothing like corn to make you feel tiny. We planted these seeds and now they tower over us. After hour of picking ears and lifting barrels full of corn, we have one more job left: test the corn. We test every morning after the pick to keep tabs on the flavor, ending the harvest on a really sweet note. Yum! We go to breakfast with our sweet tooths already satisfied.

Sweet is the word of the week. We'll continue our sweet corn routine, busy mornings that will structure our days for 7 or 8 weeks now. The sweet onions were ready and we harvested them in bulk - over 2000 lbs! in this week's sunny summer afternoons. How rare this year to be hot! Also sweet were the amazing notes we recieved from shareholders after we got late blight in the cherry tomatoes. Pulling cherries just as the fruit is ripening - all the work put in and none of the rewards reeped - is a low moment. It can also feel like a long time to wait when we have less eggplant than we planned for because of this cooler weather, when each summer crop is a at least a week late because they need heat to fully ripen and sweeten. But just then, on come the great onions, corn, and mountains of field tomatoes ... the sweet reality that all those tiny transplants we tucked in in the spring grew this?! The shareholders come with the magical reality that the time we've spent together grows these kinds of relationships?! And we're cruising through a big harvest day shouting for joy - sweet sweet summer!

Farm shares - so much more of an emotional experience than a trip to the grocery store. In a world where we could choose to just go buy pretty much anything the minute we want it, I think that (along with the picked-this-morning freshness) it's that road of reality we've all been traveling that makes this corn so sweet. We hope you enjoy the harvest.

We never know what's going to happen. Or maybe we do and we just don't want to admit it. Here we are ticking along, digging carrots, picking beets and cukes, watching the winter squash run and set fruit for the fall. The onions sizing up. The corn field ripening big in the late summer sun. The fall carrots and beets weeded. The celery rescued. And now the Brussels' sprouts looking pretty good. The cows have grass. The pond is full. The irrigation pipes haven't been used all season. Time for Zoe to go on vacation. What could go wrong?

Then a little email comes through: "Late blight found in a tomato field in S. Amherst." So, I go take a look at our pick-your own field, where the cherry tomatoes and the paste tomatoes live this year. And sure enough, those brown lesions, that just make my heart sink. Not on every row. Just the Sungolds. And the sicilian plums. And the saladettes. The ones that aren't blight resistant. The ones that we grow just because they are so delicious.

It's been two years, but I know the drill. Step one, on the first sunny day get the sprayer ready and coat the main season tomatoes with copper to protect the big crop. Step two: remove the trellises from the bad rows, and harrow in the tomatoes as quickly as possible (to get rid of the oospore factory). Step three: report this to our local farmers and extension so that folks know what's up. Step four: Hope for the best and go back out and count our blessings.

They are still there (our blessings). The sweet corn field looks about ready to burst for weeks. The peppers are loaded. The onions are bulging. The potatoes are sizing up. The leeks, the celery, fall carrots and beets. Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts all look like gold. We will miss our Sungolds. And hope to see them again next year. No time for regrets. We have other things to do.